This invention relates to fiber fluff materials and products useful as decorative material in arts and crafts projects, window dressing and display cases, as well as to yarn made from such material and knitted fabrics and apparel made from such yarn.
It is a common practice among those working in the arts and crafts fields, such when creating miniature displays utilizing miniature figures and snow scenes as well as in constructing terrariums, to use a variety of commercially available fluffy-like fiber materials, such as those known as xe2x80x9cfiber fillxe2x80x9d consisting of a random fluffy mass of polyester fibers, or similar fluffy material made from natural fibers such as cotton in the form of cotton balls and the like. Examples of such products are xe2x80x9cPOLY-FILxe2x80x9d(copyright) brand polyester fiber fill made by Fairfield Processing Corporation of Danbury, Conn., xe2x80x9cAIR-LITExe2x80x9d brand fiber fill material made by Air-Lite Synthesis of Pontiac, Mich. (Simplicity Pattern Company), xe2x80x9cCOSMETIC PUFFSxe2x80x9d brand of cotton balls made by Acme/Chaston of Dayville, Conn., xe2x80x9cJohnson and Johnsonxe2x80x9d Cotton balls made by J. and J. Consumers Products Company in Skillman, N.J., resin treated xe2x80x9cPOLY-FIBERxe2x80x9d material made by Steams Technical Textiles Co. of Cincinnati, Ohio, xe2x80x9cPRETTY HAIRxe2x80x9d brand fiber fluff made by Aldastar Corporation, Brooklyn, N.Y., xe2x80x9cWAVY HAIRxe2x80x9d brand decorative fluff made by One and Only Creations of Napa, Calif. and xe2x80x9cFLUF-STUF(copyright)xe2x80x9d brand fiber fluff material made by Village Sampler Industries Inc., distributed by Dayton Hudson Corp., Minneapolis, Minn. 55402 and xe2x80x9cFEEL-O-FLEECExe2x80x9d brand fiber fluff material made by Plaid Enterprises, 6553 Warren Dr., P. O. Drawer xe2x80x9cExe2x80x9d, Norcross, Ga. 30091.
Such fluffy fiber materials are often also used in the making of baby quilts and accessories and quilted clothing and pillow stuffings as well as in home decorating and craft projects. Typically such ready-made materials are provided as a uniform mass of white fibers and less often as a uniform blend of two or more different colors and shades of fiber. However, if a multi-colored decorative effect is desired, a variety of different colors of ready-made fiber fill products must be assembled from an inventory of differentially colored uniformly blended stock of such materials. Alternatively, decorator spray paint of various colors can be applied in attempt to create a variegated color effect after the material is assembled on the scene. However, these existing materials and techniques are undesirable or unsuitable for many decorative craft or professional applications, both from the standpoint of undue cost and time consuming labor and less than desirable aesthetic effects being achievable.
The foregoing deficiencies of commercially available fiber fill materials led to the development of the products, methods and apparatus provided by the present invention. Some of the history of the development of the present invention as well as the disclosure of making and using an early embodiment of the present invention is set forth in the aforementioned Disclosure Document Number 394526, attached hereto at Appendix A and incorporated herein by reference.
Accordingly, among the objects of the present invention are to provide a new and useful fiber fill material, preferably made from synthetic fibers such as polyester, in the form of a light fluffy, loose mass of randomly arranged fibers of a density of about 12 ounces per cubic foot. The new fiber fill material of the invention is preferably packaged as a product for convenient end use to provide a tangled mass of loosely interlocked fibers that is easily hand worked and arranged as decorative material. The fiber mass is preferably multi-colored to provide the different colors so that they visibly appear as swirls, highlights and blend off into one another as irregularly shaped random and random-appearing islands and streaks and swirls of one color of fiber intermingled with some of the fibers of the other color to create a highly pleasing and decorative xe2x80x9ccotton-candy or candy canexe2x80x9d visual effect.
Another object is to provide a fiber fill multi-colored material of the above character, and new and improved apparatus for making the same, that may be readily spun into yarn to provide a multi-color variegated random color effect in the novel yarn thus produced that is representative of the two or more colors of the aforementioned multicolored fiber fluff product.
A further object is to provide novel textile fabrics and novel wearing apparel made from such fabrics as knitted goods that are knit from the aforementioned novel yarn to thereby provide a variegated random color effect in the apparel article containing randomly appearing colors yet proportioned in accordance with the color properties in the starting material yarn, which in turn contains randomly appearing color proportioned in accordance with the quantitative proportions of color in the starting materials of the fiber fill fluff product from which the yarn is spun.
Another object is to provide improved methods and apparatus for making the aforementioned decorative fiber fluff material, products, yarn and fabrics and wearing apparel and other fabric articles.